The 2024 Harbor Law Department Survey is now open – 20 years since the first iteration of the industry-leading benchmarking report on legal spend, staffing and operations. Since its inception by HBR Consulting, one of the founding companies of Harbor, the survey has provided both in-house counsel and their law firm counterparts with a holistic view of law department priorities and challenges.
Participate in the 2024 Survey
Make your voice heard in the 2024 Harbor Law Department Survey – a trusted source of benchmarking data for Fortune 500 legal ops leaders and GCs for 20+ years - now conducted in collaboration with CLOC.
We sat down with survey editor Lauren Chung, lead for Harbor's Strategy + Transformation practice and optimization officer for Harbor Labs, to discuss the survey’s evolution, impact, and a new collaboration with the Corporate Legal Operations Consortium (CLOC).
The Harbor Law Department Survey has a long and storied history. Can you tell us about its inception and how it’s changed over the years?
The survey started in 2004 and at its core, we’ve maintained the foundational elements of what makes the survey so special: the caliber of participants; the depth, richness, and quality of the data; and the tracking of core metrics, as well as emerging industry trends.
However, a lot has changed over the past two decades in how we deliver the results. Early on, we printed out the reports and assembled them in physical binders that we would mail to participants and clients. Now our interactive online portal gives users the power to look at the data sets they want to analyze and overlay their organization’s data across every data point, which makes comparisons much easier.
We’ve also started going beyond just delivering the survey data. We are also working with participants to dig deeper into their results and help lay out potential action plans.
Similarly, our industry Sounding Boards program brings together different members of our community to discuss the application of the survey data in supporting continuous improvement in law departments.
What makes the Harbor Law Department Survey so unique and effective?
In addition to the fact that it’s the longest-running and most robust benchmarking data in the industry, what sets the survey apart is the quality of the data and its participants.
We poll an impressive mix of roughly 150+ companies, most of whom are in the Fortune 500. They’re specially curated with efforts to have representation across industries. We also have numerous quality control measures to ensure the data’s accuracy. We engage in ongoing dialogue with our participants to validate their submissions and support reporting accuracy.
It’s also worth noting that Harbor is not a survey house – we are industry-expert consultants and we're working across the legal ecosystem with corporations and with law firms. That means we bring our experience and knowledge of the sector’s dynamics to the survey, allowing us to add new questions, refine older ones, and truly capture the pulse of industry trends.
Thinking back on 20 years of the survey, are there certain trends that emerge? What’s changed in legal operations over the past two decades—and what hasn’t?
One constant has been cost pressure: How can law departments ensure they’re being thoughtful about the management of outside counsel and legal spend amid increased demand, ongoing talent shortages, and macroeconomic uncertainty?
What’s interesting, however, is that the mix of this spend has changed. Twenty years ago, the majority of legal budgets were going to outside counsel; now it’s much more balanced, with more and more work being brought in-house. That’s coincided with the rise in legal operations to support law departments that are increasingly being treated as a business function, with all the accountability and scrutiny that comes with that. Law departments are under a microscope and have to thoughtfully consider the allocation of their internal resources, management of the legal costs and efficiency drivers to support legal service delivery. The use of alternative legal service providers (ALSP) has been on the rise. ALSPs have become partners to law departments seeking more cost-effective ways to deliver legal services.
Finally, there had been significant growth in the role of technology to support the operations of the law department. When we started this survey 20 years ago, we didn’t even ask about legal technology. Now it’s a significant part of our survey. We are closely tracking trends in the use of technology and capturing data on performance of specific legal technology vendors. Going forward – and with the AI boom – we’ll be further expanding our tech coverage.
Harbor and CLOC have announced their collaboration on this year’s survey. Can you talk about the significance of this partnership?
Our partnership with CLOC will help take the Harbor Law Department Survey participation base to the next level. It will help us reach more organizations, and the combined data set will be the basis for CLOC's 2024 State of the Industry report.
With more participants, we will be able to produce richer results that can impact the direction and future of the legal industry. This will be a significant win for the legal ecosystem.
Participate in the 2024 Survey
Make your voice heard in the 2024 Harbor Law Department Survey – a trusted source of benchmarking data for Fortune 500 legal ops leaders and GCs for 20+ years - now conducted in collaboration with CLOC.
- Law Department Benchmarking Survey
- Outside counsel management
- Benchmarking
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